As I write this, I have three virtual machines running simultaneously alongside OS X:

• A 256mb FreeBSD system, commandline only (no X). This is my local webserver.
• A 396mb Ubuntu system running KDE
• A 764mb Windows system running XP

This is all under VMWare Fusion on a 2.0ghz/2gb/250gb white MacBook. The VMs are located on an outboard USB drive.

And it’s not killing the machine!!

Kind of amazing, really, when you consider they collectively take up 1416 mb of memory on a 2gb machine. that leaves a bit more than 500mb of memory for OS X (Leopard) to run in.

As the VM’s fired up, there was a bit of a slowdown, but once they settled down from the boot activity, I could switch from one to the other without a perceptible drop in performance (assuming no heavy background processes running on any of them – I imagine inducing a large software build in any of them would probably load things down.)

I’m way impressed. I tried running the Ubuntu image and the WinXP image simultaneously under Parallels, and it brought the machine to its knees. I didn’t have to reboot the host machine, but I had to wait an excruciatingly long time for the selected guest machine to shutdown cleanly and the system to regain it’s composure.

Under Fusion, things are running surprisingly well. I’m sure I won’t keep it this way (I don’t think), but it’s nice to be able to do it.

I guess you have to credit VMWare’s long history doing virtualization technology that make this happen. I can only wonder how many images I could run simultaneously on a Mac 8 core tower (drool) without performance degradation.

As it is, I’m pretty happy being able to run the three I can.

Competitive Upgrade for Fusion

As of this writing, VMWare is offering a competitive upgrade rebate to Fusion – after you apply the rebate, Fusion comes out to around $50.

Think I’m going to have to do it, based on what I’ve seen.

Some Asides/Gripes

Just a couple of notes:

• I’d like to be able to set the IP range for the NAT system manually, leaving a few for statically assigned addresses. I need this primarily for the FreeBSD web server, but I like all the VMs to have known addresses.
• (There is a way to do this – you have to go in and edit some buried configuration files – would rather see an interface to do it, like on VMWare Workstation in Windows.)
• Not really a criticism as something to ponder: I want to use a bluetooth headset for Yahoo Messenger VOIP capability (YM VOIP isn’t supported on the Mac, yet). In Parallels, an intermediate driver is installed between the hardware and the VM’s – thus, when you change the sound source on the host system to bluetooth, you can get it in the guest without messing up anything else.
• In Fusion, the guest apparently has access to the hardware and, thus, communicates with the BT driver, directly.
• Powerful, in one sense, but if you also happen to be using a BT mouse or keyboard or other device, the VM grabs that, too, and it doesn’t go back to the host system. Ever.

So, an annoyance, there, but not a deal breaker.

rickb

So, after having a few meltdowns w/ Parallels, I decided to give VMWare Fusion a go.

The Parallels problems seem to have gone away (fingers crossed) with the latest Mac OS X upgrade.

But, I’m still working with VMWare. A couple of pluses:

• I could be wrong, but qualitatively, I think XP under VMWare is faster. I do a lot of compilations over shared volumes – they seem to go faster under VMWare.
• The images are smaller w/ VMWare. In the case of my XP VM, it went down from 38gb to 33gb. That’s significant.

On the down side:

• Trying to get Yahoo Messenger to work in the XP VM was a nightmare – big hangs and I had to power down the system and reboot several times.
• Bluetooth audio doesn’t appear to be working in VMWare.

Both of those features in the last work quite well in Parallels.

But, the only thing I want this capability for is VOIPing over YM. The good news on that front is that Yahoo has just release a Mac version of Messenger (and that’s a big honkin’ YAHOO!). Thus far, it seems to work pretty well.

Which eliminates the need for the VOIP solution under the XP VM (one of the critical reasons for keeping Windows around…)

Users of Skype can be happy, too – they’ve had Mac version out for some time, now.

rickb

On my machine, anyway?

I’ve just upgraded to Leopard on my MacBook – everything seemed to work ok, including the new XCode environment. But, XP under Parallels has been causing kernel panics, regularly.

What to do? I tried to semi-retrograde the MacBook to Tiger by installing that on a USB disk, that I can boot from. I’ve wanted to have a dual-boot scenario, anyway.

Nice try, no cigar. It seems that once OS X sees a new version on a disk, it won’t let you install a previous version, at all, anywhere. Trying to boot from the DVD produces an endlessly wheeling circular progress indicator.

The only way I can make that happen, it appears, is to pull the disk from the machine , insert another, and install fresh. Since this is my only machine, I’m not terribly enthused about that option (but I may screw up the courage — and the time — to do it, anyway.)

On to VMWare…

The next option is to try another VM solution, entirely: VMWare has had it’s Fusion product for the Mac out for a few months now — I could download a trial version and see how it goes.

The upshot is: it goes real well. It has successfully converted my XP and Ubuntu images to VMWare images (the Ubuntu went a little rough — uninstalling Parallels Tools from within the VMWare image waxed the X11 environment. I had to uninstall the tools under Parallels on the original machine and reconvert. Second try worked fine.) Just a FreeBSD image to go.

And the kernel panics went away.

Furthermore, the Ubuntu VM’s “multiple hit” problems with the mouse and keyboard have disappeared, as well.

And, another plus: I like to autohide taskbars, when I can. In Ubuntu under Parallels, I couldn’t do this — if I turned the feature on, the bar went away and hitting the mouse on the target edge would not bring it back. I had to find the keycode to pull it back up, and then turn off the auto-hide feature. Under Fusion, it works great.

So, I have to say, I’m impressed with VMWare’s efforts on the Mac (I had used them before on Windows, and they were rock solid there.) The networking came up transparently (I’m still trying to figure out what voodoo they did to map my VM’s current IP address range into their NAT – maybe they got it from the Parallels network pseudo-devices…)

Aftermath

There’s more to test – how do USB devices fare?  Do I get USB 2.0 or 1.1, if I get it at all?

I hate to give up on Parallels – they brought me to the Mac dance, after all. And it’s paid for.

But, in the end, I can’t have kernel panics, and I want my VM’s to work without funny glitches.
rickb

The Promise, Revisited

The White MacBook had been running reasonably well, since I got it back from AppleCare. Outside of the occasional hang from the DVD player, I hadn’t had any further experiences with the Dreaded Random Shutdown Syndrome, or the Dreaded Vertical Line syndrome.

It was time to put this thing to work, and see if the multiple OS situation was feasible.

Apple provided an interesting intermediary solution – you can dual-boot Windows in a separate disk partition. Not bad, but to be able to have a web-server running in a separate machine, I need real virtualization, or I’m back to lugging around multiple machines.

VMWare, my old stalwart on Win machines wasn’t available on the Mac. But, a new company had sprung up, called “Parallels”, and, lo and behold, they did claim to work on the Mac. In fact, Apple all but endorsed them.

I downloaded the demo version, installed it and then installed an XP image, configured it enough to see the Windows boot screen and desktop come up, and promptly bought it.

Now, it’s an early version of the software, and there are a few wankiness’es about the environment, but fundamentally, it’s working. Parallels supports all of the versions of Windows, most Linux distributions, FreeBSD, and Solaris. They’ll all boot up and run, in parallel. Wankiness’es include having to reboot the guest machine to change anything, including network settings, not a true NAT implementation, and USB1.1 support only.

But, the development team is working hard and furiously on updates – the last fixed the reboot-on-network-change issue, and USB 2.0 is rumored to be in the works, as well as ability to burn CD/DVD’s, etc., etc.

The Promise: Realization

After a few weeks of configuration, I now have pushed over pretty much all of my Windows envoironment to the Parallels VM on MacIntosh. Additionally, I have two VMs of FreeBSD (a minimal version for web-serving and a full version for X-Windows/KDE testing), and more planned. With 2gb of memory, I can run up to three OS’s simultaneously. When I flip into full screen, I don’t even know I’m on a MacIntosh. But, when I want it, I have Mac available on the same platform.

It’s been a bit of a road. But it’s been worth it.

I now can carry only a single machine, if I want to. In practical terms, that’s not always feasible – I like to carry a backup on long trips, in case my primary machine fries. But, I don’t have to, especially when I go out on quickie jaunts.

I’m a happy camping developer.

rickb

The New: White MacBook

The new Intel MacBooks were out, and it was time to upgrade. So, I popped for a nice, shiny white MacBook, maxed out as much as possible with the 2ghz Intel Duo processor, 160gb hard-drive, and 2gb memory. Figured that should last for a while.

(Why, you might ask, not a MacBook Pro? Frankly, IMHO, the Pros are a lot of footprint and bulk to carry around. From the comparison specs, I couldn’t see any difference in pure processing power between the Pro and the standard Black/White MacBook. The standard configuration is a lot smaller, lighter, and thinner, although Apple could take a lesson from Toshiba and Fujitsu on making small notebooks.)

Things with the new Mac went well, initially – I put on Parallels (worth a review in it’s own right), added the development kit, and started filling it up.

Then, the unimaginable happened: as I was working, the machine just blinked off. I blinked back and tried to reboot. No, it didn’t want to reboot. I held the power button down for the extended five-second period, and it booted, albeit very reluctantly. It took a good five minutes for it to reboot.

Thinking it was just a glitch, I continued on and at the end of the session, powered the machine down. Imagine my disappointment when the machine wouldn’t boot up, normally (I had to use the long hold on the power button, again), and even more dismay when it konked out in the middle of a session, again. No warnings, no, “Hi! I need to reboot..” message accompanied by a smiley face. Nada. Just suddenly black screen.

The Dreaded Random Shutdown Syndrome

A perusal of the web revealed I wasn’t the only one having these troubles. There were reports of incidents all over the Mac forums, with the responses from Apple being vague disclaimers: “Gee, we’ve never heard of that…” type, followed up by recommendations to to a hard reset, a PRU reset, etc., etc., etc.

But, as I dug deeper, I could see there was more to the problem. There was (may still be as of this writing) a full domain dedicated to the issue (macbookrandomshutdown.com), with a lot of disgruntled folks complaining about Apple’s indifference and threatening a class-action lawsuit.

Time to call Apple. The person on the other end I talked to was extremely polite, and didn’t ask me to go through the “reset the following six things and maybe re-install your operating system” dance (ok, an exaggeration, but that’s what it feels like.) He just gave a number and sent a box, which arrived the next day. I packed the machine per instructions and sent it in.

The machine came back within a week, all clean and shiny. None of the horror stories I’d read about happened (like the hard-drive being cleaned prior to return.) The machine booted up, and seemed to work fine.

The Dreaded Vertical Lines Syndrome

All seemed well, until I booted it up one morning and was greeted by a gray screen, with slowly-filling-in vertical color-lines. No happy face, no desktop, nada. A reboot repeated the scenario.

Fine. Good thing I’d kept the box.

Another call to Apple, another courteous response, and an interesting answer: This was actually a known problem, and was resolved by … an OS upgrade. Get outta here! It certainly looked like a hardware issue, to me.

But, I followed the gentleman’s advice and installed the latest upgrade (2.4.8, at the time), and, voila! No more grey screen with vertical color-lines. After about six weeks of messing around, maybe I could get back to making this thing suit my purposes.

(Cont’d next…)

rickb

The Promise

As a cross-platform software/web developer, I find it important to have as many platforms as feasible available on which to test/adopt various pieces of software or webpages. There’s simply no other way to guarantee cross-platform robustness than having an actual running system available.

Under normal circumstances, that means packing a lot of hardware. But, with the advent of virtual machine technology, I’ve been able to consolidate at least the Intel OS’s (various flavors of Windows/Unix) with a thing called VMWare Workstation that allows multiple OS’s to run on a single box.

This has been good, but the Apple MacIntosh has been the odd duck in the parade. It didn’t run on Intel chips, so virtualization wouldn’t work with the Mac OS.

Thus, I have had a Mac for a while. (I still have a Color Classic kicking around in my office, waiting until it becomes an ‘art collectible’, if anyone reading this is interested: I can dispose of it for a premium! (Not holding my breath – the last eBay check, they were going for something like a $160, and that’s with original manuals, box, and everything.)

The Old: Wallstreet

Anyway, for a number of years, I had a Wallstreet MacBook. The kind in the big black case with the bronze/transparent keyboard.

As it went, it was a reasonable machine – G3 processor, nice big screen, reasonable touch. But, since it wasn’t used very often, the PRU battery kept dying, which meant it wouldn’t boot, or it would throw the power management board, completely. I went through a lot of power management boards on that machine. Finally, the last time it died it failed all attempts to rescuscitate: maybe it was time for an upgrade.

Besides, now that the new Intel-based Macs were out, an interesting thought began to form in the back recesses of my mind: If Mac is going to Intel, I wondered if VMWare might not work on it. The idea of being able to run all of the major operating systems on a single platform was very tantalizing, if not flat-out mouth-drooling…

(To be cont’d…)

rickb